Dutch Meatballs

Woensdag Gehaktdag! "Wednesday is ground meat day".

It used to be the marketing slogan for the butchering trade during the fifties and sixties. Why Wednesday? Presumably because the butcher would butcher  on Monday, cut on Tuesday and process all the leftovers into ground meat on Wednesday. Whether that's entirely true or not, I don't know, but it sounds true to me.

Dutch Meatballs
1 lb of ground beef, preferably 85/15 or half beef, half pork
2 slices of white bread
1/2 cup of milk

2 shallots or one small onion
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg, ground
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of black pepper, ground
2 tablespoons of prepared mustard
2 tablespoons of flour
4 tablespoons of butter

Instructions:

Mince the shallots or small onion.

Add the meat to a bowl, mix in the shallots, the egg, the mustard, nutmeg, the salt and pepper and knead a couple of times.

Cut the crust off the bread, soak it in the milk and add it to the meat. Dispose of the rest of the milk.

When the mixture has come together, divide it in four equal pieces.

Roll each piece into a ball, roll the meatballs throughout the flour and set aside.

Heat the butter in a Dutch oven and sear the meatballs on all sides until brown.

Lower the heat, place the cover on the pan and let them simmer for a good twenty minutes.

Then turn them over in the butter and simmer for another ten minutes. Add 1/2 cup of water to the pan, cover and simmer for another twenty minutes.

Remove the meatballs from the pan, add 1/2 cup of beef stock to the pan and stir to loosen up all the meaty bits from the bottom of the pan. 

Taste and see if you need to adjust salt/pepper or bind the juice a little bit with cornstarch or flour, you decide.
Serve with dutch potatoes, vegetable, and roll.